Before she began dating Cher’s famous offspring, Jennifer Elia had an incident with an ex-lover that led to her arrest, Star magazine has exclusively learned in a bombshell new report.

On May 2, 2004, a year before Elia, 36, began dating Dancing with the Stars contestant Chaz Bono, she was arrested and booked by officers with the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Los Angeles division on a charge of “battery of an ex-spouse/fiancee/person with a dating relationship.”

The arrest statute is 243(E)(1)PC, a misdemeanor according to the California Penal Code. A state law expert told Star it is often referred to as “simple domestic battery,” and adds that the perpetrator can be arrested “even if you used only the slightest force…any unwanted physical touching will suffice. This means that you don’t actually have to injure your intimate partner to be convicted.”

The outcome of Jennifer’s case is unknown, as only the victim and the victim’s family or attorney are privy to the full police report. But Jennifer herself may have given a clue about the source of her alleged aggression in the documentary Becoming Chaz when she admitted: “When things get tough, I start to drink.”

Happily, Jennifer reported in May that she had been sober for 14 months.

For more details about Chaz’s fiancée’s arrest pick up the latest issue of Star Magazine on newsstands now.